Two models sit uncomfortably on a table draped in a sheet to look like a bed, wishing they’d struck easier positions. Her: one knee bent to touch her chest, her spine spun into an S, but at least her chin rests on her fist, at least her maple-hued hair is held tight in a high bun away from her face. Him: halfway through movement, leaving the bed, maybe leaving her—actually, she has turned him away, spurned a shy advance just as shyly, or cut the tie of a years-long relationship by saying, “I just don’t love you anymore.” And his eyes are downcast, sad really, one hand with a light grip on his own skin (I am really here, this is not a dream) and about to say to a spot on the wall, “It’s not a light switch, that’s not how love works,” to which she won’t respond, will just look at the opposite wall until the silence over-churns and she gives finally to the butter of it and says, “It’s been happening for some time now,” and they both just stay there, like the glue of the moment is dry and neither can peel from the bed full of memories, like the day they bought it, their first joint-purchase, and she was wearing in fact these same pleated jean shorts because they are not a fad for her, she got them from her mother, one of the only things she had to leave her along with some trinkets and costume jewelry, and as he remembers them slipping down to her ankles someone calls, “One more minute,” and the dog lifts his head just slightly off the dusty floor to sigh, stretches a paw, scratches a claw against the wood, and suddenly the girl smiles, turns to the guy, but he stands up and, not looking back, walks out of the room.

 

 

Laurin Becker Macios is the author of Calling Me Home, a Young Adult verse novel forthcoming from Holiday House in 2026; Somewhere to Go, winner of the 19th annual poetry award from Elixir Press; and I Almost Was Animal, winner of the 2018 Writer’s Relief WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine, [PANK], and elsewhere, and is currently nominated for Best of the Net 2026. The former Executive Director of Mass Poetry and former Program Director of the Poetry Society of America, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught on fellowship. She lives in Connecticut.